Very funny (while informative) video produced by Toni DeBella, a blogger (Orvieto or Bust) who has relocated her life to Orvieto, Italy.

location of Orvieto, Italy

Rick Steves, a travel consultant, is based in my state and is well-known for helping Americans be smart and courteous European travelers. I had a bunch o’ Rick’s info packed for my Italy trip that didn’t happen.

There are apparently four videos in The Food Police series, but I did start with the Rick Steves episode at the link (below). It’s only 9 minutes long, well worth watching (loved Rome’s cobbled side streets). The other episodes are shown at the link, too. Only about 3-something minutes each.

“Ciao, Professore!” is a charming, laugh-out-loud movie, by Lina Wertmüller, released in 1993. Next to the title in parentheses were these words: Io speriamo che me la cavo. Here’s the Netflix blurb:

In director Lina Wertmüller’s upbeat comedy, Marco Sperelli (Paolo Villaggio) — a priggish upper-class teacher from northern Italy — is mistakenly assigned to a tumbledown school in an impoverished village near Naples. But upon arriving, he finds most of his students hustling on the streets to earn money for their families — and before you can say “school of hard knocks,” Sperelli becomes the pupil as the kids tutor him about life’s realities.

I don’t speak Italian, so the English subtitles could be accurate that translated the very, very rude language of the 3rd graders. Somehow it worked, those little children hollering some terrible language. It probably worked because it was coming out of the mouths of little children. Laughed and laughed till I couldn’t breathe!

The parenthetical title in Netflix was in little tiny letters and got me curious. (Thank you Google.) The movie is based on the book, released in 1990, Io speriamo che me la cavo (I did not know there was a book!).

Apparently, the book is a collection of the real essays written by children going to school in Arzano near Naples. At that link there is a sample of the humor and is well worth reading. I remember this passage well in the film and it was hilarious! Still funny! Now I want to read the essays…. !! Better get studying!

The real reason I started this post was to quote a particular piece of wisdom in the movie. But I digressed. (gasp!) I’ll tell anyway:

I’ve been sick for a stinkin’ month. My usual prescription is rest and the occasional ibuprofen. But today, the light bulb went off, albeit a slow-to-warm fluorescent, when I realized that I was actually getting worse instead of better AND that I’ll be flying in two weeks and a couple of days. aggggghhh!

No respiratory thing to start a trip on a pressurized craft! No, no, no! The thought of my poor old sea-level ears and lungs being pressurized to 6,000 feet fills me with dread! Gimmee the dang drugs, man! (My physician’s assistant, who only sees me when I’m dead or dying or if I have to get refills of happy pills, actually had an appointment this afternoon and I got the drugs, man!)

The last time I went to Europe I had pneumonia. It was a grand ski vacation for three weeks to Austria and Switzerland. I tried to ski (telemark), but I was in pretty bad shape for a while, so spent a fair amount of time riding the narrow-gauge rail a little way down the hill to the baths. Which, of course, I loved!

The group I went with was a bunch of downhill ski patrollers I associated with in my capacity as a backcountry ski patroller. My dear friend Dolly, who was not a patroller, went too and we were partners in escapades and curious adventures. One non-skiing day, the whole group went on bus tour down the mountain and on the way back up, Dolly and I decided we should get off at the baths.

Well. We were in Switzerland. I spoke basic French, a smattering of Spanish, and pretty good Chinese. (I could also say mit schlage in German, which means with whipped cream, but I couldn’t find a way to comfortably or helpfully toss it into the conversation.) Dolly spoke Spanish fluently.

You should have heard the two of us faking it in French, English, and Spanish to ask the driver to please let us off at the place where we could catch the narrow-gauge. I probably threw in some Chinese because my brain gets all bollixed up with all the languages floating around. I digress. (Cue Eddie Izzard dancing.) Our busload of buddies ended up cheering for us –and the driver– as we stepped off at the correct place!

On our way to Europe from Anchorage, we stopped over in Copenhagen, which I thought was quite fabulous! We had about 24 hours there and I planned to make use of that time, jet-lag be damned (and very real!). Dolly and I decided to find our way to Roskilde, the site of the Viking Ship Museum. We’re both adventurous and have that attitude that carries us wherever we want to go. We knew we could catch a train, so planned to trundle off to the station.

The others in the group, I think there were 9 others, decided that might be fun, but not a one of them was interested in finding the way. Keep in mind that everyone else in the group was a tough downhill ski patroller–they see broken bones, blood, contusions, all the icky stuff, whereas we backcountry folks tended to see avalanches and the occasional stabbed-himself-with-his-pointy-pole stuff. Well, there was that one guy who dropped dead, but that’s for another story. (Eddie Izzard again dances in my head! la la la, where was I?)

Nobody else spoke a language other than English either, so I imagine it was kinda daunting. The group of us started walking to the train station, Dolly and I in the lead, reading the Danish signs (how?) and the 9 others following in a duckling-train behind us. Standing at stoplights was particularly amusing — the Other 9 would mill closely around Dolly and me, clearly not willing to leave us, so we 11 would stand in a clutch until the light changed, then the duckling-train would chug along again.

Dolly and I bought the tickets for all 11 of us. The Other 9 stuck close by us on the train ride–what if we had tried to sneak off without them? How would they get back to Copenhagen without us? How would they find the hotel? gasp! (Lots of folks speak fluent English there, including the ticket seller at the train!)

At Roskilde, we walked in a duckling pack until I thought I would scream. I am an independent sort and require a level of independence of those around me. When we finally got down to the water and the museum, I ducked out on ’em and wandered around the museum that I had wanted to see, to experience, without a single quacking duckling in my wake.

Then it was time to go get the train back to the big city and we did the duck walk dance again.

That was a grand trip. I still have the souvenir sweatshirt from les bains de Val d’Illiez where I spent so much time soaking away the pneumonia! (The baths are MUCH fancier now than when we were there!)

My first stop on my Italy trip will be in a tiny village called Bagni di Lucca. Bagni means baths. Yep, I’m going to soak myself in the baths again. How cool is that?!

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Like this:

I’m going to be in Italy for a month and have plans for only the first 10 days. The rest will fall into place! This is the area I’ll concentrate on… but who knows what could happen?!

After landing in Bologna, I’ll hop a train and bus to stay with a blogging pal in a tiny village in Tuscany.

A couple of days later, I’ll take the train to Ravenna where I’ll take a 5-day mosaics class that teaches the traditional methods. I will also celebrate my 55th birthday there! I’ll be staying in a small B&B right in the historical district and will quite likely ride a bicycle to class!

I’m hoping to apprentice in a mosaics workshop, which would require that I stay in Italy for longer than a month. If I still have money, I may do that!

that is mosaics!

Then, since Venice is just up the road, I’ll probably head there. How could I miss Venice?! Burano or Murano?

Siena?! I have a guidebook that belonged to my uncle who visited there on a break from North Africa during WWII. I’ve long wanted to see Siena…. but it’s south of that purply highlighted area! hmmmm…. what to do? what to do?

… I will be wishing I could get comfortable in my cramped Lufthansa airline seat so that I could sleep away the 10-hour overnight flight.

Lufthansa long-haul flight

I will also want to stay awake to watch icy white Greenland slide along below us, 41,000 feet under those wings.

Four Wednesdays hence I will be living my dream of spending a solo month in northern Italy. I have the round-trip ticket, I have registered for the 5-day classical mosaics class in Ravenna on the east coast, and I know where the flight sets down outside Bologna, but I still don’t know where I’ll lay my jet-lagged head the first night or nights thereafter. I don’t know if I’m renting a car at the outset or at all.

I do know I will be celebrating my 55th birthday in Italy. Cinquante cinque ani!

This dream of going to Italy has haunted me for years. Perhaps once I’m there I’ll be able to articulate the tremendous magnetic desire to be in that tiny country. Life experiences to now have narrowed like a funnel to point to the concluding reason for the disparate events that all seem to make sense now:

Mom had us studying Latin when we were kids and I continued to study in college. Gaudeamus igitur, etc. and so forth!

We lived in Taranto way down at the heel of Italy when I was a wee thing and apparently my brother and I spoke conversational Italian to our housekeeper, though we apparently refused to speak Italian to our parents! Dov’è Laurio? Andiamobambini!

The Ancient Italians, those amazing, warring Romans, have had my attention for decades. They knew how to use concrete as well as any modern concrete contractor! Amazing! Underwater!

Some years ago I wanted to learn mosaics, but since I wanted to do outdoor installations, I stopped what I was doing with mosaics to teach myself about concrete as a substrate for those mosaics. I love working with cement! I love the smell of admixture in my cement and sand mix in the morning!

Four Wednesdays hence, as I fly to Italy, it will be two years ago almost to the day that I was laid off from a quite fine job, a job from which I believed I would retire with a nice little 401k. I at least have the little 401k!

These last two years have been an exploration, a rediscovery of the guts I possess that have allowed me to simply try something! How hard could it be?!

In an effort to become employable once more, I studied landscape design, but after the third quarter of commuting to school in unfathomable traffic, I called Uncle! and stopped. Simply stopped. Panicked. Didn’t panic. Wondered and thought and pondered in that nonmoving space and time.

Recovered from the exhaustion brought on by being caught up in the too many people in too-close quarters driving aggressively at 70 mph! As I came out of the exhaustion, I returned to my spot in the garage and poked around with my concrete stuff again. Created some oddball stepping stones. Became inspired, at last being rested and refreshed after a difficult 1-1/2 years, to work on mosaics along with the concrete.

Full circle. I know concrete as a substrate for outdoor installations. I learn mosaics in leaps and bounds, absorb knowledge and wisdom from the teachers who have written books. Knew I wanted badly to go to the seat of Byzantine-era (around 600 CE) mosaics and learn at the feet of master mosaicists.

Still have to earn a living and wondering what in hell to do at my age when I’ve effectively been shut out of the job market.

Boing! Clink! Bing! I shall be a concrete and mosaics artist and I will call the business Concrete Couture (TM).

Four Wednesdays hence, I shall be on my way to Italy, to tie together those disparate experiences, to bring to the fore all the courage I’ve ever had, to try something new, to take a leap of faith, the only net being the Universe, which has cared for this Earthling all these years, kept me alive and showed me how to thrive.

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